Cheney/Rumsfeld get waterboarded.

CNN is reporting that the McCain amendment prohibiting any and all torture will be passed by the House (already passed the Senate) Bush had vowed to veto, will he?

Torture and the Constitution
Sunday, December 11, 2005; Page B06

DOES THE Constitution permit the use of "waterboarding," or simulated drowning, to extract information from people detained by the government? To most Americans, the very question may sound ludicrous. Waterboarding, after all, has been recognized as a torture technique since the time of Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition. U.S. soldiers who were caught using it on enemy insurgents in the Philippines, in 1901, or the Vietnam War, in 1968, were prosecuted. When suffocation by water was used by foreign governments, such as the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, the State Department didn't hesitate to call it torture.

Yet the Bush administration sees it otherwise. Not only have senior officials denied that CIA interrogation techniques, which are known to include waterboarding, constitute torture, but administration lawyers argue that the practice doesn't necessarily violate the lesser international legal standard of "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment." In ratifying the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman and Degrading Treatment in 1994, the Senate defined "cruel, inhuman and degrading" as any practice that would violate the Fifth, Eighth or 14th amendments. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pledged during her tour of Europe last week that administration policy was to prohibit all U.S. personnel from breaking that standard, presumably including those who staff secret CIA prisons. Since the administration continues to maintain that it is not legally bound by the constitutional test outside the United States, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is pressing legislation that would make that purported policy a law.


What Ms. Rice's statements concealed is that administration lawyers have concluded that waterboarding and other CIA pressure methods don't necessarily violate the Constitution. Case law, they say, doesn't offer a clear guide to what actions represent a clear breach. The standard, they say, is flexible. In the case of a terrorist who may have information that could save thousands of lives, goes the administration reasoning, extreme measures might be acceptable. That's why, when he was asked about waterboarding and a series of other abusive acts during his confirmation hearing earlier this year, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales testified that "some might . . . be permissible in certain circumstances."

Europeans and Americans who interpreted Ms. Rice's statements last week as an assurance that the CIA will no longer use waterboarding, prolonged shackling or induced hypothermia in its secret prisons were misled. Administration officials tell us there has been no decision to abandon those practices. Similarly, those who have hoped that the McCain amendment would end CIA abuses, as we have, must lower their expectations. The creation of a legal standard, while essential, probably will have to be followed by an effort to compel the administration to respect it, through further legislation or court action.

Interpreting the Constitution as permitting waterboarding in secret prisons is, to most experts outside the administration, legally outrageous and politically untenable. It means that the Bush administration accepts, in principle, that the FBI may use waterboarding, painful stress positions, forced nudity and other methods on Americans, in American prisons, "in certain circumstances." That's why the Justice Department has classified its memos on the subject and kept its conclusions secret. That's why President Bush and Vice President Cheney have worked so hard to stop the McCain amendment, which would pave the way for legal challenges to their interpretation. They want to give themselves the authority to commit human rights abuses without having to explain or justify themselves to the public, the world -- or an impartial court.

CNN is reporting that the McCain amendment prohibiting any and all torture will be passed by the House (already passed the Senate) Bush had vowed to veto, will he?

An Ethiopian claims that his confession to al-Qaeda bomb plot was signed after beatings, reports David Rose in New York

Sunday December 11, 2005
The Observer


An Ethiopian student who lived in London claims that he was brutally tortured with the involvement of British and US intelligence agencies.
Binyam Mohammed, 27, says he spent nearly three years in the CIA's network of 'black sites'. In Morocco he claims he underwent the strappado torture of being hung for hours from his wrists, and scalpel cuts to his chest and penis and that a CIA officer was a regular interrogator.

dyslexia wrote:

CNN is reporting that the McCain amendment prohibiting any and all torture will be passed by the House (already passed the Senate) Bush had vowed to veto, will he?

Does the amendment make any attempt at all to define torture? If it does not, then even tough but legitimate questioning could be claimed to be torture by an attorney. This amendment would be a good thing if phrased appropriately. Do you have a link to the text of the bill?

Brandon9000 wrote:

dyslexia wrote:

CNN is reporting that the McCain amendment prohibiting any and all torture will be passed by the House (already passed the Senate) Bush had vowed to veto, will he?

Does the amendment make any attempt at all to define torture? If it does not, then even tough but legitimate questioning could be claimed to be torture by an attorney. This amendment would be a good thing if phrased appropriately. Do you have a link to the text of the bill?

If I understand it correctly, he is asking that the army field manual be the standard for treatment of prisoners.

CNN is reporting that the McCain amendment prohibiting any and all torture will be passed by the House (already passed the Senate) Bush had vowed to veto, will he?

The White House at one point threatened a veto if the ban was included in legislation sent to the president's desk, and Vice President Dick Cheney made an unusual personal appeal to all Republican senators to give an exemption to the CIA.

McCain torture amendment actually permits torture.
by RichardG
Thu Dec 15, 2005 at 11:38:17 PM PDT

The torture amendment that was agreed upon today by the White House does nothing to stop torture and abuse in US prisons.

Hopefully, everyone knows by now that torture and abuse is authorized and the troops are being trained how to committ war crimes and torture and abuse prisoners in violation of the Geneva Conventions, long-standing army regulations and International law.

The McCain amendement does nothing to stop the abuse and torture as it leaves the enforcement of the bill up to the White House and denies prisoners judical review (habeas corpus rights):

Quote:

America is reaching a turning point on torture.

Congress will soon consider two amendments that threaten a descent into hypocrisy. Both have been tacked onto the defense authorization bill. A provision by Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) is an unconditional bar on torture - a prospect President Bush finds so damaging he is threatening to veto the entire bill.

But he won't have to, thanks to a recent amendment by Sen. Lindsay Graham (R., S.C.). This one bars Guantánamo detainees from going to federal court to enforce the rights that McCain would declare sacrosanct.

A shabby compromise is in the making. Bush removes his veto threat - as long as Graham's amendment remains in the bill - to transform McCain's principles into a hypocritical gesture: Listen up, world, we are against torture at Guantánamo - as long as nobody can complain about it.

To deflect critics, Graham has created an exception to allow Guantánamo inmates their day in court once they are finally convicted of a crime by a military tribunal. But this exception creates more perverse incentives. If a detainee has been victimized, the best way to cover it up is to hold him indefinitely as an "enemy combatant" and never send him before a military tribunal. That way, he will never get access to a federal court.

At present, only nine of the 500 Guantánamo detainees have been charged with crimes, and none have yet been convicted. How long will it take for Americans to learn what is really going on inside?

Graham's amendment poses even greater damage. The Supreme Court has recently decided to hear a case from a Guantánamo inmate who insists that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires a judicial hearing immediately. Graham's rider may require the court to drop this case in midstream.

Congress has made a similar assault on judicial independence only once before. After the Civil War, a Union Army commander threw a Mississippi newspaper editor in jail for agitating against Reconstruction. When William McCardle petitioned for habeas corpus, the Supreme Court seemed about to free him. But Congress intervened to strip the case from the court's docket, and the justices caved, leaving McCardle in military prison.

Perhaps the modern court will show more backbone this time around. If it doesn't, it will gravely weaken its authority. The Graham rider threatens to reverberate far beyond Guantánamo, endangering the constitutional rights of all Americans.

Despite the high stakes, Graham did not even give Congress a fair chance to consider the matter. He made an end run around the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.), and persuaded the Senate to accept his court-stripping rider as a floor amendment.
Specter eloquently protested, but he was outvoted in the rush to push the matter into a conference committee.

The Senate leadership plans to continue its rush tactics this week. It will ask the Senate to rubber-stamp the final conference bill before it begins its Christmas recess. But Specter should stand firm against a cynical compromise that will defang McCain's anti-torture initiative.

Given the grave issues raised by the Graham amendment, a filibuster is entirely appropriate to give the judiciary committee a chance to expose the Graham amendment to sober second thought. It would be tragic if McCain's admirable proposal becomes an occasion for yet another assault on the fundamental principles of the American Constitution.